Antigua 2/17/18

We had our last meal on board this morning and said our sad goodbyes to our sweet crew and our home for seven days, Further. Off to the the airport and an incredibly long trip home. 

This was a wonderful trip with wonderful friends on a gorgeous island!

Antigua 2/16/18

Bill, Sandy and I took our last dive at Pillars of Hercules in the morning after breakfast. The water was bright and clear - great dive all around. We saw two spotted rays and a huge lobster. I have a picture of him but there is no scale, so it is hard to see how large it really was.

After the dive we took a leisurely and lovely cruise on calm water to Valley Church Beach, where I took a little swim around the boat several times. I need the exercise after all of the food and drink intake!

Next we took the boat into Jolly Harbor where we spent the night. We had our last Happy Hour with our Patron tequila and Ting, thanks to Victor! George made us some delicious strawberry daiquiris. He makes the best drinks of any Tradewinds cruise we have been on!

We headed to Akropolis Greek restaurant for dinner on shore. We treated our crew, George, Alett and Ben to dinner. We had planned to go to Castaways for the Reggae Band, but it started pouring rain and we all just ducked into Further instead.

 We had a wonderful last night with our crew: Alett, Ben and George (The Thinker).

Antigua 2/15/18

After breakfast we motored from Falmouth Harbor to English Harbor, where we will try for a dive at Pillars of Hercules. We took the dinghy out not too far from the boat. The water was warm enough and there was pretty good visibility. We saw lots of the tropical fish. Pretty good dive. It was so nice to get back to it after a year.

After the dive they sent us ashore at English Harbor for sightseeing and shopping. Lots of cute shops and a neat museum of Nelson’s Dockyard. This area has a long British history. We ended up at a beautiful restaurant on the water called Admirals Inn. We sat in a little cabana on sofas. Very enjoyable afternoon.

Victor returned to the boat with a brown paper sack full of TING! He saw a waitress carrying a bottle from a shop, so he went in and purchased some. We have been Ting-less for the cruise due to a shortage on the entire island. We were able to find four battles earlier when we were in St John but everywhere else we looked there was none. The story is that the company that makes Ting also makes two brands of beer and they are catching up on production after the hurricanes. At any rate, it was nice to finally be able to enjoy our signature cocktail! 

We returned to Further to a late lunch. Then after a little nap, we took a taxi to Shirley Heights to listen to Halcyon, a steel drum band. The 360˚ vista was amazing and the music was fun. A reggae band played next and we listened to a little of that. We came home to a late meal on Further - delicious duck breasts with mashed potatoes.

Antigua 2/14/18

Rick and I put heart stickers on everyone’s doors for Valentines Day, along with a bag of Dove chocolate hearts.

Alett had a sweet Valentines Day breakfast. Her eggs Benedict were heart shaped as was the bacon cluster. She also had red muffins with white chocolate ganache in the shape of a heart. What a great start to our first sunny day!

We sailed to Indian Creek Bay, which is protected. Eric Clapton has a compound on the bluff above.

It was the calmest and sunniest weather we have had all week! On the way the most incredible thing happened. A pod of about 15 dolphins decided to swim with us. Barb Doerr and I were in the dolphin seats and they were directly below us, jumping out of the water. It was the most amazing experience. They swam with us for about 20 minutes.  I will never forget this amazing experience. I just wish that I had had my camera. It was too choppy to have someone hand it up front to the dolphin chair.

Ben took Sandy, Bill and me out to the potential dive site to check it out. It was not manageable, so the three of us snorkeled back to the boat. Poor visibility and not much animal life to see.

We enjoyed our time at Indian Creek very much. It was sunny and not windy. We all went snorkeling. Not much to see but still fun. 

George is an expert surfer behind a dinghy. It was so much fun to watch Ben driving the dinghy like a maniac with George doing an incredible job keeping up.

Later we headed back to Falmouth Harbor for the evening. On the way, we lost all of our noodles.  They broke loose. George went out in the dinghy and rescued every one of them! Apparently, Tradewinds keeps track of the noodles on each boat.

On board we had Happy Hour with a red beet hummus and an olive tapenade.

Champagne was served with a local flower in the bottom of the glass. The flower is a Sorrel and it lends a distinctive flavor to the drink, but we were warned it was not edible.

It was a memorable Valentine's Day. Love this cloud!